Siloam tunnel

According to the Torah, King Hezekiah, fearing a siege by the Assyrians led by Sinaheherib , whose threat looms over the city, prepared Jerusalem for a siege by blocking the water from a source outside the city and redirecting it, through a canal, to the then Siloam pond ^[8] . The following Bible verses relate to the Hezekiah tunnel:

“The rest about Hezekiah and all his exploits, and that he made a pond and water supply and led water to the city, is written in the annals of the kings of Judah.” ^[9]

“When Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come with the intention of fighting against Jerusalem, then he decided with his princes and his military men to fill up the sources of water that were outside the city, and they helped him. And a great multitude gathered, and all the springs and the stream flowing through the country fell asleep, saying: May the Assyrian kings not find, having come here, much water. ” ^[10]

“He, Hezekiah, blocked the upper channel of the waters of Geon and led them down to the western side of the city of David. And Hezekiah acted successfully in all his work. ” ^[11]

“But you see that there are many breaks in the wall of the city of David, and you collect water in the lower pond; and you mark the houses in Jerusalem, and destroy the houses to strengthen the wall; and build between the two walls a repository for the waters of the old pond. But do not look at the One who does this, and do not look at the One who has long determined this. ” ^[12]

In modern times, the tunnel was first described by Francesco Quarezmi in 1625 ^[13] . It was later investigated in 1838 by the American biblical scholar Edward Robinson ^[13] , and in 1865 by Charles Warren ^[14] .

Neither Quarezmi nor Robinson connected the tunnel with Hezekiah ^[13] ; however, in 1871, Warren suggested that the Siloam pond could be “dug by King Hezekiah” ^[15] , and in 1884, after the opening of the Siloam inscription, he wrote: “Thus, it seems that the inscription refers to the late period of the Jewish monarchy, and it may well be considered consistent with the biblical account of Hezekiah's preparation for the siege of Sinaheherib ” ^[16] .

Being located on a mountain, ancient Jerusalem is naturally protected from almost all sides - however, it suffers from the fact that its main source of drinking water, the source of Gihon, is located on the slope of the gorge, located above the Kidron valley. This creates serious military vulnerability, since the city walls - if they are built high enough to have a defensive meaning - must leave the Gihon spring outside, thus depriving the city of drinking water in case of siege.

This weakness was eliminated by the Canaanites, who built a very powerfully fortified tower around the source and connected it to the city walls located on the slope by means of an additional wall that formed a well-protected corridor. It is now known that the Warren mine system already reliably protected the Gihon spring ^[17] (the Warren mine is not an aqueduct - the person who wanted to get water had to go down and climb it independently). Thus, under Hezekiah, the source of Gihon was already protected and was inside the urban system of protective walls, and it seems that in case of a siege, Jerusalem would have been provided with sufficient water even without a tunnel.

Moreover, in 1899, an ancient canal was discovered, also leading from the Gihon spring through a rock, but in a more direct way, and ending halfway to the location of Siloam Pond. Today, this channel is known as the channel of the middle of the Bronze Age , which is associated with an estimate of its age: Ronnie Reich determined that it was built around 1800 BC. e. (in the middle of the Bronze Age ). Its original construction is as follows: a ditch of 6 meters deep dug in the ground, covered with large stone slabs (which were then hidden in foliage). The channel is narrower than the tunnel, however, nevertheless, you can go through it almost along its entire length.

So, starting from about 1800 BC. e. - that is, many centuries before Hezekiah - the Canaanite tunnel was already collecting the source water and diverting it to the south. However, the water that was not used by the population of the city, he drained through several small outlets, irrigating the gardens and fields along the Kidron Valley in the east, and ended in a mouth a meter high near Siloam pond - that is, an open reservoir ^[18] . Giving the opportunity to engage in agriculture, important for life, such a device at the same time made water available for besieging troops outside the city walls.

Thus, according to Ahron Horowitz, director of the Megalim Institute, the Hezekiah tunnel can be interpreted as an additional aqueduct, designed to leave the entire volume of water flowing from the source inside the walled area (which included the Siloam pond located downstream ), for the specific purpose of depriving water of any besieging army. Both Gihon itself and the pond at the other end of the tunnel would be used by the population as sources of water; in this case, troops located outside the walls would not have access to any part of it, since even its excess flowing from the Siloam pond would completely disappear in the karst system located immediately beyond the southern tip of the city walls.

The Torah text describing the construction of the tunnel ^[4] and the radiocarbon dating of organic materials contained in the original plaster ^{[5] are} considered as confirmation of dating by the period of Hezekiah. However, archaeological work in the tunnel, carried out in 2011 by Ronnie Reich from the University of Haifa and Eli Shukron from the Israel Antiquities Authority , raised doubts as to the relegation of the tunnel to Hezekiah’s reign ^[19] . These scholars believe that the evidence suggests dating back several decades earlier — the end of the 9th or the beginning of the 8th century BC. e. ^[19] . They note that the biblical text linking Hezekiah to the creation of water features does not describe their exact location in the city, and suggest that this text may refer to water features in the Mamilla area ^[19] .

A correction to the dating is supported by De Groot and Fadida, based on the analysis of ceramics ^[20] .